Mental Health

Citation:

Sim, Timothy, Jocelyn Lau, Ke Cui, and Hsi-Hsien Wei. 2019. "Post-Disaster Psychosocial Capacity Building for Women in a Chinese Rural Village." International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 10: 193-203.

Authors: Timothy Sim, Jocelyn Lau, Ke Cui, Hsi-Hsien Wei

Abstract:

Mental health interventions following disasters have been criticized as individualistic, incomplete, and culturally insensitive. This article showcases the effects of a culturally relevant and sustainable psychosocial capacitybuilding project at the epicenter of the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake. Specifically, the project focuses on women, a group that has received limited attention in post-disaster recovery in China. This qualitative research study (N = 14) sheds light on the characteristics and processes of the implementation of a post-disaster psychosocial intervention project in rural China. In addition, by adopting the Success Case Method as an evaluation approach, this study elucidates its effects on the psychological and social changes of the disaster victims. The findings capture five aspects of psychosocial changes: enriched daily life, better mood, enhanced self-confidence, increased willingness to socialize, and the provision of mutual help. This study hopes to encourage more culturally relevant and empowering practices for women in building their psychosocial capacity after disasters.

Keywords: China, natural hazard-induced disasters, post-disaster recovery, psychosocial capacity building, success case method, women empowerment

Topics: Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Women, Health, Mental Health Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: China

Year: 2019

Citation:

Ishiguro, Aya, Machiko Inoue, Jane Fisher, Mariko Inoue, Shoko Matsumoto, and Kazue Yamaoka. 2019. "Gender-Based Risk and Protective Factors for Psychological Distress in the Midterm Recovery Period Following the Great East Japan Earthquake." Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness 13 (3): 487-96.

Authors: Aya Ishiguro, Machiko Inoue, Jane Fisher, Mariko Inoue, Shoko Matsumoto, Kazue Yamaoka

Abstract:

Objectives: Women and men might experience psychological distress differently during a disaster. This study investigated gender differences in the factors associated with psychological distress among working-age people 1 to 2 years after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Methods: A cross-sectional household survey of victims who remained living in their homes was conducted between May and December 2012 in Ishinomaki City, Japan. Psychological distress was defined as a Kessler Psychological Distress Scale ≥5, and gender differences were examined using a logistic regression analysis. Results: Data were obtained from 2593 individuals, and 1537 participants were included in the analyses. Psychological distress was observed in 28.0% of the participants. Living in a household without a salaried income and a low frequency of leaving the house were associated with psychological distress among women. Young age, lack of occupation and no informational support were associated with psychological distress among men. Income change due to the disaster and health complaints were associated with psychological distress in both genders. Conclusions: For women, stable household income and frequently leaving the house can be protective factors. For men, intervention focusing on young people, occupational support, and informational support may be useful. Income change after the disaster and health complaints may be risk factors in both genders.

Keywords: natural disasters, Psychological distress, gender difference, working age

Topics: Age, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Health, Mental Health, Households Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Japan

Year: 2019

Citation:

Namuggala, Victoria Flavia, and David Kinyumu Katende. 2016. "Post-Conflict Humanitarian Assistance in Northern Uganda: The Social Work Role." In The Handbook of Social Work and Social Development in Africa, edited by Mel Gray, 328-40. Abingdon: Routledge.

Authors: Victora Flavia Namuggala, David Kinyumu Katende

Annotation:

Topics: Age, Displacement & Migration, IDPs, Development, Gender, Health, Mental Health, Humanitarian Assistance, Sexual Violence Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2016

Citation:

Islam, M. Rafiqul. 2020. "Water Access in Changing Climate in Bangladesh: A Study of Social Impacts on Women who Manage Household Water." Bandung 7 (1): 107-29.

Author: M. Rafiqul Islam

Abstract:

Access to water depends on the availability of water but climate change impact such as sea level rise, increase frequency and intensity of cyclone, floods, and erratic rainfall reduces the availability of water by either polluting water sources or damaging water supply and management infrastructure. Women are the worst victims of climate change regarding water access as they are primarily responsible for managing water for the household. This study focuses on how climate change is responsible for reducing water access and subsequently bear on women in addressing the water crisis problem. The study found that women face challenges in access to water that affect them in terms of less time, physical and mental health problems, sexual assault/harassment, violence in the household, reduce their income, children’s education, early marriage, divorce, and make more difficult to perform their responsibility. Initiatives should be taken to enhance water access for women on a priority basis.

Keywords: access to water, availability of water, climate change impact, water crises, women, Rainwater harvesting

Topics: Education, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Women, Health, Mental Health, Households, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Sexual Violence, SV against Women

Year: 2020

Citation:

Patel, Sangram Kishor, Gopal Agrawal, Bincy Mathew, Sunita Patel, Biswajit Mohanty, and Abhishek Singh. 2019. "Climate Change and Women in South Asia: A Review and Future Policy Implications." World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development 17 (2): 145-66.

Authors: Sangram Kishor Patel, Gopal Agrawal, Bincy Mathew, Sunita Patel, Biswajit Mohanty, Abhishek Singh

Abstract:

Keywords: women, resilience, climate change, South Asia, extreme events

Topics: Agriculture, Economies, Poverty, Environment, Climate Change, Health, Mental Health, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Livelihoods, Security, Food Security Regions: Asia, South Asia

Year: 2019

Citation:

Mamun, Mohammed A., Nafisa Huq, Zinat Fatima Papia, Sadia Tasfina, and David Gozal. 2019. "Prevalence of Depression among Bangladeshi Village Women Subsequence to a Natural Disaster: A Pilot Study." Psychiatry Research 276: 124-8.

Authors: Mohammed A. Mamun, Nafisa Huq, Zinat Fatima Papia, Sadia Tasfina, David Gozal

Abstract:

Women living in disaster-prone areas are at risk of developing and suffering from mental health problems, such as depression. However, this issue has not been studied previously among village dwelling women in Bangladesh. Improved knowledge of post-disaster depression rates and its risk factors could facilitate design and implementation of targeted disaster management protocols. Therefore, face-to-face surveys were conducted from September to October 2017 among 111 women in Dalbangha village, Bangladesh who survived cyclone Mora. Depression was assessed using the Bangla Patient Health Questionnaire – 9 (PHQ-9) along with relevant sociodemographics and disaster-related variables. The prevalence of depression was 64.9% and 36.9% of the women failed to receive any alert prior to the disaster. Along with a wide range of post-disaster consequences, 36.0% were physically injured, 27.9% had to be absent from work with consequent income loss, and 17.1% experienced death of a family member. Lower age group (18–30 years), being an income earner, disaster-related physical injury, and post-disaster work absenteeism emerged as the risk factors associated with depressive symptoms. In light of current findings, disaster preparedness programs and management protocols should incorporate measures aimed at palliating the risk factor elements that promote depression among vulnerable women following a disaster.

Keywords: natural disaster, cyclone, depression, risk factors, women, Bangladesh

Topics: Age, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Women, Health, Mental Health, Livelihoods Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh

Year: 2019

Citation:

Bor, Güley. 2019. Response to and Reparations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Iraq: The Case of Shi'a Turkmen Survivors in Tel Afar. London: London School of Economics Middle East Centre.

Author: Güley Bor

Abstract:

Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has been widespread in Iraq during the most recent Islamic State conflict. Thousands of Yazidi and hundreds of Shiʿa Turkmen women and girls were subjected to various forms of CRSV, including sexual slavery and forced marriages. Survivors need, demand and have a right to emergency responses as well as reparations. However, an overview of the situation of Shiʿa Turkmen survivors who returned to Tel Afar demonstrates how the Government of Iraq’s inaction, together with its discriminatory laws and practices, continue to fail women, and survivors in particular. Shiʿa Turkmen survivors must be provided with timely, comprehensive and survivor-centric medical, legal, economic services and mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), while community-oriented programmes must address the high levels of stigma to which survivors are subjected. To address the medical, psychological and social harms arising from CRSV, complex reparation programmes (both urgent and comprehensive) should be designed and implemented through effective survivor consultation, by ensuring that all survivors are included in their scope. While the recent reparations bill is a step in the right direction, Iraq is in urgent need for wider reform in addressing sexual violence and ensuring its non-repetition.

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Girls, Governance, Health, Mental Health, Justice, Reparations, Sexual Violence, Sexual Slavery, SV against Women Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq

Year: 2019

Citation:

Pankhurst, Donna. 2016. “‘What Is Wrong with Men?’: Revisiting Violence against Women in Conflict and Peacebuilding.” Peacebuilding 4 (2): 180–93.

Author: Donna Pankhurst

Abstract:

Much has been written about the high rates of rape and other forms of violence against ‘enemy’ women in wartime and sustained violence against women in post-war contexts. Research on violence against women, recognised as a problem for peace and development and even a threat to international security, has begun to identify and explain contrasts between different locations. The explanations focus on men, their behaviour and ‘masculinities’, some of which, and even some military codes, may even proscribe such violence. By contrast, research on the mental health of male former combatants, and possibly other male survivors of war trauma, suggests that there is a strong risk of them perpetrating violence specifically against women, even in cases where the highest standard of veteran care is expected, but without much explanation. This article considers what potential there is in this topic for lessons in peacebuilding policy and identifies areas for future research.

Keywords: sexual violence, Gender, war, peacebuilding, masculinity, men, ex-combatants, veterans, soldiers

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Male Combatants, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Health, Mental Health, Peacebuilding, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women

Year: 2016

Citation:

Ní Aoláin, Fionnuala, Naomi Cahn, Dina Francesca Haynes, and Nahla Valji, eds. 2018. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Authors: Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, ed., Naomi Cahn, ed., Dina Francesca Haynes, ed., Nahla Valji, ed.

Abstract:

The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict brings together leading interdisciplinary scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to address a complex range of challenges, contexts, geographies, and issues that arise for women and men in the context of armed conflict. The Handbook addresses war and peace, humanitarian intervention, countering violence and extremism, the United Nations Women, Peace, and Security Agenda, sexual violence, criminal accountability, autonomous weapons, peacekeeping, refugee and internally displaced person (IDP) status, the political economy of war, the economics of conflict, as well as health and economic security. It begins with theoretical approaches to gender and conflict, drawing on the areas of international, peace and conflict, feminist, and masculinities studies. The Handbook explores how women and men’s pre-war societal, economic, and legal status relates to their conflict experiences, affecting the ways in which they are treated in the post-conflict transitional phase. In addition to examining these conflict and post-conflict experiences, the Handbook addresses the differing roles of multiple national and international actors, as well as the UN led Women, Peace, and Security Agenda. Contributions survey the regulatory framework and gendered dimensions of international humanitarian and international human rights law in situations of conflict and occupation as well as addressing, and critiquing, the gendered nature and content of international criminal law. The Handbook also includes grounded country case studies exploring different gendered experiences of conflict in various regions. As a whole, this Handbook seeks to critically examine the contemporary gender-based challenges that emerge in conflict and post-conflicts contexts.

Keywords: Gender, conflict, post-conflict, sexual violence, feminism, United Nations, women, Peace and Security agenda, International actors, peace, war

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: Mapping the Terrain: Gender and Conflict in Contemporary Perspective
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

2. Theories of War
Laura Sjoberg

3. From Women and War to Gender and Conflict?: Feminist Trajectories
Dubravka Žarkov

4. The Silences in the Rules that Regulate Women during Times of Armed Conflict
Judith Gardam

5. How should we Explain the Recurrence of Violence Conflict, add What Might Gender Have to do with it?
Judy El-Bushra

6. The Gendered Nexus between Conflict and Citizenship in Historical Perspective
Jo Butterfield and Elizabeth Heineman

7. Violence Conflict and Changes in Gender Economic Roles: Implications for Post-Conflict Recovery
Patricia Justino

8. Victims Who are Men
Chris Dolan

9. Women, Peace, and Security: A Critical Analysis of the Security Council's Vision
Dianne Otto

10. Participation and Protection: Security Council Dynamics, Bureaucratic Politics, and the Evolution of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda
Anne Marie Goetz and Rob Jenkins

11. A Genealogy of the Centrality of Sexual Violence to Gender and Conflict
Karen Engle

12. 1235 + 17 = ?: Filling in the Blanks of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda
Kimberly Theidon

13. Complementary and Convergence?: Women, Peace, and Security and Counterterrorism
Naureen Chowdhury Fink and Alison Davidian

14. Unlocking the Potential of CEDAW as an Important Accountability Tool for the Women, Peace and Security Agenda
Pramilla Patten

15. The Promise and Limits of Indicators on Women, Peace and Security
Pablo Castillo Díaz and Hanny Cueva Beteta

16. Humanitarian Intervention and Gender Dynamics
Gina Heathcote

17. (Re)Considering Gender Jurisprudence
Patricia Viseur Sellers

18. Complementarity as a Catalyst for Gender Justice in National Prosecutions
Amrita Kapur

19. Forced Marriageduring Conflict and Mass Atrocity
Valerie Oosterveld

20. Advancing Justice and Making Amenda Through Reparations: Legal and Operational Considerations
Kristin Kalla

21. Colonialism
Amina Mama

22. Conflict, Displacement, and Refugees
Lucy Hovil

23. Gender and Forms of Conflict: The Moral Hazards of Dating the Security Council
Vasuki Nesiah

24. The Martial Rape of Girls and Women in Antiquity and Modernity
Kathy L. Gaca

25. "Mind the Gap": Measuring and Understanding Gendered Conflict Experiences
Amelia Hoover Green

26. Intersectionality: Working in Conflict
Eilish Rooney

27. Agency and Gender Norms in War Economies
Patti Patesch

28. Risk and Resilience: The Physical and Mental Health of Female Civilians during War
Lauren C. Ng and Theresa S. Betancourt

29. The Gender Implications of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Conflict Situations
Barbara A. Frey

30. Unmanned Weapons: Looking for the Gender Dimensions
Christof Heyns and Tess Borden

31. Gender and Peacekeeping
Sabrina Karim and Marsha Henry

32. Peacekeeping, Human Trafficking, and Sexual Abuse and Exploitation
Martina E. Vandenberg

33. Women, Peace Negotiations, and Peace Agreements: Opportunities and Challenges
Christine Bell

34. Women's Organizations and Peace Initiatives
Aili Mari Tripp

35. Gender and Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration: Reviewing and Advancing the Field
Dyan Mazurana, Roxanne Krystalli, and Anton Baaré

36. Decolonial Feminism, Gender, and Transitional Justice in Latin America
Pascha Bueno-Hansen

37. Gender and Governance in Post-Conflict and Democratizing Settings
Lisa Kindervater and Sheila Meintjes

38. Who Defines the Red Lines?: The Prospects for Safeguarding Women's Rights and Securing Their Future in Post-Transition Afghanistan
Sari Kouvo and Corey Levine

39. "That's Not My Daughter": The Paradoxes of Documenting Jihadist Mass Rape in 1990s Algeria and Beyond
Karima Bennoune

40. Consequences of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence on Post-Conflict Society: Case Study of Reparations in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Lejla Hadzimesic

41. Colombia: Gender and Land Restitution
Donny Meertens

42. Knowing Masculinities in Armed Conflict?: Reflections from Research in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern

43. Northern Ireland: The Significance of a Bottom-Up Women's Movement in a Politically Contested Society
Monica McWilliams and Avila Kilmurray

44. Gendered Suffering and the Eviction of the Native: The Politics of Birth in Occupied East Jerusalem
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

45. Rwanda: Women's Political Participation in Post-Conflict State-Building
Doris Buss and Jerusa Ali

46. Sri Lanka: The Impact of Militarization on Women
Ambika Satkunanathan

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Displacement & Migration, Forced Migration, Refugees, Economies, War Economies, Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Health, Mental Health, Humanitarian Assistance, Justice, Livelihoods, Peace and Security, Post-Conflict, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Peace Processes, Terrorism, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Trafficking, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, Violence

Year: 2018

Citation:

Kisulu, Anita, and Lina Darras. 2018. "Highlighting the Gender Disparities in Mental Health among Syrian Refugees in Jordan." Intervention: Journal of Mental Health and Psychological Support in Conflict Affected Areas 16 (2): 140-46. 

Authors: Anita Kisulu, Lina Darras

Abstract:

Jordan has been a host country to many refugees from neighbouring countries for many years and has recently become a place of refuge for thousands of Syrians. The Syrian crisis has resulted in millions of Syrians fleeing their homes, uncertain of When they will return. Most of those seeking refuge have witnessed and/or experienced traumatic events that have affected their mental well-being in addition to starting over as refugees. Despite the large number of non-profit organizations providing free mental health services to refugees, not everyone has equal access to these services. This report, based on a literature review and a focus group discussion, highlights the different gender dimensions of mental health among Syrian refugees in Jordan. These risk factors include access to and use of mental health services, manifestation of mental health and psychosocial problems, treatment by mental-health workers and the socio-economic outcomes of living with someone suffering from mental health. 

Keywords: Gender, Jordan, mental health, refugees, Syria

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Gender, Health, Mental Health, Livelihoods Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Jordan, Syria

Year: 2018